MasterCard Seeking To Sell Customer Data
According to a Wall Street Journal article, MasterCard is working on a plan to sell marketers an analysis of anonymous, aggregated data sorted into marketing “segments,”. For example, a segment might be a list of people with a high likelihood to be interested in international travel or attending sports events.

Currently, MasterCard and Visa analyze spending behaviors anonymously. In other words, they look at data that does not contain your name or contact information.

Credit Card Data Will Result In Targeted Ads
The next evolution of this style of marketing is upon us. The companies are trying to figure out how use the data to send targeted advertisements to you based on your known likes and interests from prior purchases.

For example, if there are a bunch of credit card transactions from fast food restaurants in your account history, maybe a weight loss company would target you with an ad for a diet program.

Which Credit Card Is Right For You?

CreditLookout helps consumers by providing the tools and information needed to make choosing and applying for credit cards as easy as possible.

How To Prevent MasterCard From Selling Your Information
You can remove your information from MasterCard’s analysis by providing your card number on the “Data Analytics Opt-Out” page at www.mastercard.us/privacy.

Consumer Reactions Vary
Some consumers say no big deal such as Joshua Holbrook who posted:

“So the takeaway from this article is that Visa and Mastercard are doing a very complex customer segmentation. That’s no different that what virtually every company does today. Granted, Mastercard and Visa have a very rich data-set, but they don’t have names or addresses. This isn’t big news.”

Another support, Warren Lee, share “I must say that, in spite of privacy concerns, I like the idea of actually receiving advertising that is relevant to me. Imagine that an ad comes to me on a web site that is for a product that I already buy and that the timing of the ad coincides with my purchase history. Go one step further and give me a discount on it and I am all in, privacy be damned!”

On the other hand, some people are uncomfortable with this idea including Friedrich Smith,“This is an abuse of the implicit trust which consumers place in banks and other financial companies. I trust them to keep my information mine–and I give them a monopoly over that information and compensate them rather well for that service (regardless of what they might believe). When did I give these companies explicit permission to use my personal financial and purchase information so that these companies could mine this data and use me as a guinea pig for their marketing experiments?”

What do you think about MasterCard and Visa using people’s spending habits as a means of helping marketers send you more personalized, targeted advertisements in the mail and on the Internet? Visit the DailyDollar Forum and share your thoughts.